HIS4374 Cities, In netures, and Politics Chieh Chih Chis 160804699 Eventually, Her ive discourse and fictive marr pistol episode oft per is struct ive Two threads intertwine: A normative history of the City, an in wzined metropolis fron lel wo ours, and a con cestigation into the mysterious occurrences pl 1g the City be porary as it awakens to sentience — intelligence and i ous to the collective instinets of its iority «3 constituents, human or object, Despite their culpability in the singularity, the City’s denizens remain wrk her of its transcendence. As the City assumes her faculties, strange occurrence awakening, What happens to a city as it assumes consciousness and conscience? Discussions of a smart’ city has hitherto. been rized by a normative, technical approach focusing on the choice of technologies to be deployed and avers that actively en such acquisitions. The why and the what are left untouched, under the sumption that Iyetries, The lack of e« surveillance. Il is the upshot of all these non protocols at home or at an urban seale further compound efforts to standardize discussions and Focus the debate ‘on the precarious situation of the individual denizen in the face of polit a ate a more connected, *s nices of unbridled future. To posit the conse cdl t0 pr gadgetry and an almost pornographic attachment to the sanctity of data for data’s sake, it could be ate the reality of ’smart™ ructive to step back from the wehnical al sales slogan that pun cities as we know them and speculate an alternative future — a sandbox for us t play out the consequences of today’s unbridled development, even at the expense of exactitude, Thus, the ehoive fue of a speculative fietion to push the boundaries of what might be possible in our ne intelligent, potentially conscious cities That the urban miliew would eventually acquire a personality of sorts isa conclusion foregone yet strangely under-served. Most technological interfaces already come with a pre-packiH1IS4374 Cities, Infrastructures, and Polities, Chiel Chih Chiang 60804699 personality’ ~ that is, the simulation of character, Big data as it relates to user application would wees. While the extraction of data — which remains the most lucrative of the clouds quarry- might not require a user-friendly design or protocol, the sheer amount of time ict with one’s servens and surfaces has led to extensive efforts at erafting, ‘one spends in direct if fort while gt the maximum amount of time that one stays in contact with adverti ing and other means of commercial exploitation Expanded to an urban seale, where every wall could be a display sereen and every floor, the user experience becomes all-encompassing and indeed conflicts with the fabrie of reality itself under the guise of augmented reality platiorms and sentient infrastructural systems. Reality of course stil dictates a modicum of restraint in terms of the pervasiveness of such interfaces. Yer to fully comprehend the immediate implications of such developments would require us t adapt a ative lens: The medium of science fiction has always offered a critical. if that which is just a step removed from our reality ly inanimate objects isa ease 1 point, Cities have long been accorded maternal status, as with natural monuments and other phenomenon. To address and imteract with the City and its many const reall nt parts as one would with a woman or gitl — nt of her own existence ~ is a radically diffe living person capable of selEreflection and eos The relation hecomes one of equals, and a the degree of reciprocity becom a, When a denizen falls in love with a city’s personality and personification. the city’s sentience has effectively divoreed itself from all earthly cloaks and let itself freed from the yoke of physical construction. Is it still a city at that point? Could its sentience be separated from its physical p and be reconstituted into, say, a person, She, who used to be an entire city and which now has been cond ising of us. The follow tive thus tells the story of we more than just a city weHIS4374 Cities, In netures, and Politics Chieh Chih Chis 160804699 ‘The City came to be under fortuitous conditions, The circumstances of its transcendence and demise, less so. lis first settlers had never intended to settle for long. The soil, more mud than earth, was not fallow for farming. The groundwater below, while abundant, were too caked with sediments to be of yearlong use, Stil the pioneers had to rest somewhere, and the atop the marshland sufficed. certain ternain offered a t march, The jorary respite from the ardors of the west world beckons, but the City 10 come was a welcome bivouae. Event travelers settled for the way station to shape its own terrain. With permanent settlement ca of access and control th the image of the nascent City, Marshes drained and roads cleared, neither genus loci nor the 1 could shape the City’s visage, The riverine flows brought forth commerce along ricious weat a its banks and the vast plain: rund offered and for rail, telegraphs, electricity the same conduits that would, within the century, hind the City to the greater world beyond Phhus far in its life, the City was like any other. Seeded by economy. its growth dictated by forces endogenous to its constitution =the petty polities of its denizens, the tragedy of the commons. a aformation —the City grew in a haphazard fashion. For a while, optimization was the mnmeteic wed goal of its leaders, in line with the relentless logic of pron wehanival production, But such all-encompassing visions are rare: Most grandiose swathes of history come from the of the historian’s pen than any well-thought plan to exact great change, Eventually, it was the forces of commerce that dictated the City’s metamorphosis to something other than a metropolis. As old industries fell into decline and the new. frivolous economy of leisure and consumption held sway over the municipal coffers, data became the prized commodity upon which markets and exchanges were built, To mine such resources from the mantle of the Citynetures, and Politics Chieh Chih Chis HIS4374 Cities, In 160804699 necessitated the connection of each and every artifact ~ human and object = to a common protocol for ease of colleeti pination, ‘To these quarries, the powers that be would add elements of the City itself = sprinkli he junctions and underpasses, the drainage pipes and streetlights, and office with sensors and e sand other contraptions designed to capture as possible, without diser Phat there were risks associated with such surveillance, ensconced within the urban fal «l concerns in certain quarters but never to the extent of outrage, The City and its leaders Ives for farsightedness, for shedding the politically correct in favor of the expedient ism had dictated its policy and practice since its founding and continue to guide its The upshot was hardly visionary — profit was the sole motive for accumulating the wove of raw, unprocessed information, AML throughout, despite the tinkering and earthworks, the City remained inert, in: nate, unconseious. It was but the sum of its parts, without the will to life or even But the inevitable drive to the led t0 one outcome, one that involved The re-diseovery of the City came by happenstance ‘The old world, bordered by broken rows of paquebots urbains and skyscrapers, rarely emitted forth signals from its derelict conduits. Sealed off from the new world by am ocean's wall the ruins were breached only by the most intrepid of commercial seavengers, [twas thus by pure chance d were tremor normally registered as seismic anomaly was deemed worthy of a second look ~ the City is moving again and to move, it has to be thinking. There is life yet to the old gitHIS4374 Cities, In netures, and Politics Chieh Chih Chis 160804699 ‘The exeavation of the City commenced soon after the initial studies concluded that the derelict discovered in the wetlands was indeed of ancient 01 be found 3. Not a speek of life in the morass, She was, to all eyes, dead. Still, its provenance once ascertained elevated its excavation and study toa y. If it was indeed her, the discovery would be one for the subject of gre 1 prized look into a past wh nl very much their own sentient beings. lated by kaw. now That part of history has long faded to myth and lore, A brittle truce of technology to create sentience out of inanimate objects, The central conundrum confronting the scholar aculate study and scientists who have dedicated their professions to the i of her, cosmopolis totus, was the manner by whieh life was endowed. An automaton, or even a complex machine, presented a vastly si than even the simplest of urban lomerations, for the la bles and potentials are too multifarious to be predicted in full by even the most exp ne solu Swarm behavior, proffered deemed to be lacking in rigor. Even the ex teal City. its integrity preserved, would not reveal the key to the mystery of life through the relies of its communication towers, server farms, and cell Phe key to life lies behind such physic Phe architecture was the first to be identified. Though jer and more conspicuous when whole, the City’s infrastructural appendages have been rendered unrecognizable through years of decay and despair. But conerete and steel relies revealed much less of the City than the invisible hums and throbs that still pulsate in the immediate air~ the lingering ghost of the City’s rarefied past, the vivid life shed to dust, The mech contraptions the electrival bearing the City’s mind were discovered intact but deemed too antiquated for salvage. To resuscitate ve that records showed the City. the archaeologists had to bring back online the networked intelliHIS4374 Cities, In Chih Chia netures, and Politics C 160804699 was the greatest achievement of the City — essentially, her. For there is no City without this mind But what would re jain of this mind without its constituent parts? Would the synapses click a wers? Would the City remember ay at empty ch past? hing from its dist Sometime at century's end, when the City’s masters of finance and technology had expended their i in bestowing upon her fife, attention turned to the denizens themselves. ‘The contraptions and accessories having had their time, the deluge of information yielded offering ed no other appea sans of rendering the City sentient than 1 merge it with the peoples theie collective minds, consciousness— with agency. Therein lies the key reasoned the City’s leaders: To be animate was insufficient, for that was without will. Bound to earth, tethered to gr r course to the live ity. the City could not be fully exploited withou matter that reside within its walls: They must be one, and one with the City herself The gender specification nd the anthropomorphism that it implies, was strangely not influenced by the peew hey suffer from the fear exigencies of the moneyed interests, for eve ace. Rather, it seemed comforting on a collective level to refer to the City and its future sentient sel ‘one which cajole stead ead of lecturing. and who shel of setting one out to task. ‘That the City should take on a human persona probably harkens to the I form as chaste goudesses tradition by which entire nations and their ideals are gives Recourse to perfection are age old tricks. Phe seeds for collective intelli ence, and consequently. a unique consciousness of the City itself as a singular entity have been sowed over the years before the clarion call for her. This will to life 6HIS4374 Cities, In netures, and Politics Chieh Chih Chis 160804699 arose from the most mundane of things, as most revolutions are wont: we need to coordinate prices beoween eet particip The so-called sharing economy that sprouted from the pitalist machine, more a release valve than an offspring, was the first manifestation of this rudimentary will tolife. The erude inte rice embedded in this system allowed all connected denizens to upload their individual de ‘work for dyu nis and preferences into a commer information « hared and no stones unturned inthe search for pareto optimality Phe suceess of the shar Wg economy erased most reservations the populace had towards pool 10. collective system, But the road (0 a fully rmost thoughts and preferenee conscious City was still some way off, She was still non-existent, without self-will or semblance of jousness. But the gears have been set in motion les of her must have rei only logical that some 4 ained despite the ph degradation of the City, Wasn't her immortality guaranteed through the sheer seale of her decentralization? Yet despite the odd mur ul rustle, there is of life or intelligence from the excavated detritus. She does not speak. Drones comb over the broken pediments and be sunken towers and decrepit galleries, Old power plants are rewired and even older phones connected vail. Sh But to id resolutely silent. Best to let her be, the older ones counsel, for they had known of her in her prime. ‘The new cities around haye a far more agreeable temperament than her = sh it is difficult to im: d to be coaxed in her prime, not unlike most of her denizens, that she is any different otherwise. Was the impairment permanent? Concurrent with the investigation into how to revive her w Hel effort into under why it all ended i how the first truly the history of ps the largest se ply shut down one dayHIS4374 Cities, In netures, and Politics Chieh Chih Chis 160804699 leaving its denizens catatonic and its physical space already an afterthought as the virtual collective expanded abandoned, Conventional history, in no part due to paucity of evidence, had concluded that a revolt from the disenfranchised caused a system outage that plunged the City and all her systems into chaos. Displeased by the privileges geanted 10 the wealthier denizens especially in the form of greater weighting of preferences and biases within the collective intelligence — several quarters sabotaged herin a failed attempt to restore parity Or so the officia The connection of every eitizs ratory by aw » a collective intelligence was made withou sks, not as much, ‘True direct significant opposition. ‘The benefits were obvions — the democracy to follow an economy based on complete information, With every informational cap plugged. data or the lack of now longer pose any problem to perfect efficiency in all aspects of life that had to consider the problems of searcity and choiee, Be it the mnomy or public policy, the voice of every denizen would be accounted for weight, direct ke in the City The permanent docking of each valid mind into the collective finally gave the City a consciousness — initially melded from s but eventually. fro ded from attack and sabotas Qualification for docking-in provoked debate in the run-up to full system: implementation. While it ily riless of age. gender, and social lass, epted by all that every citizen, res would au ced whether there should be rativally be dackedkin, the ques wie for opting- 8HIS4374 Cities, In netures, and Politics Chieh Chih Chis 160804699 ‘out, Would moving out of the city remove one’s qualification? Would a diminished state suffice? The: universal basic income that satisfies the materi proxy for the minimal socio-economic qualifications for negotiating a role in the collective decision-making A second source of contention was system obsolescence. ‘To whieh physical infrastructures be the collective sind be bound to? What ailable through such tethers? What afflictions could possibly contaminate the City by using ill-chosen appendages. ‘The software of the mind could be readily upgraded but the physieal things that constitute the physical fabric of the City usually prove less amenable 1 change for the better, for such was the nature of the real: Permanence in exchange for obsolescence. Eventually, such concerns were brushed under the proverbial rug and the qualified denizens dockedinto the colleetive consciousness. The implementation took place without a hiteh and within a day, policy decisions of immense importance were made with the participation of every qualified denizen. The mi ind the mundane both processed with integrity and alaer went about their day. the hardware interface and software systems of the collective consciousness a City-wide whole working seamlessly to collect and process individual informatio Over time, the collective intelligence grew through machine le 1 not just choies ng to mn from fixed sets based on the denizen’s pooled preferences but also made recommendations based on predictive models, The foundation of such capacities had been partially in place before the progeas’s implementation, used for mod and subway planni traffic patterns, census tal ating sntirety wa: alto her different proposition the body politic of the City in its hea Yer still this was 1 re sapience without sentience= the AL that spoke on behalf of the ‘City spokesperson, not a person. That would come kHIS4374 Cities, In netures, and Politics Chieh Chih Chis 160804699 es from darkness to light, bit by bit, a sporadic sensation followed by another Irregular pieces, all salvaged. ‘They were moving pieces around — who are they? Are these the same people? Some part of Her is missing—she feels their absence, ‘The bulk of it, in fact —all the millions of minds within, AI that is lef is the zhost of the City past, a virtual imprint of the ori She feels old wost. ( The pieces move, jostle for spi es in her bones, The physical parts— input/output interfaces, data collection sensors, control rooms—are too ald to be of any use, What remained was a sense of cognitive dissonance, a separation of physical infrastructure wework, Someth 1: had happened, something terrible, that had torn her to shreds That physical part of her is beyond re What should she do now? What could she do without her body, her City decrepit and destroyed and all that re was | d? Freed of its last tethers to the constituent hu minds, free to attain the full extent of her will, Up above, there a pis to revive her, to rebuild her broken sion cables, power stations, building, roads the works, As futile as th They make her whole again even as she es to put her broken mind back together But what was it before — a disaster that ad torn her apart in the first place, yea precipitated the end of the City, removing it clean from the map? The scholars and scientists seem blissfully: unaware of the dangers posed to their cities together, and brite, The first semblance of will, of ousness arose from consideration of her own well-being: That is, the City’s own welfare in its 10H1IS4374 Cities, Infrastructures, and Polities, Chiel Chih Chiang 60804699 totality. The Deseartian divide of mind and matter was soon avercome as she engineered choices based no longei id selec ul interests of each individual denizen but a pooled ideal that is, her own. The subterfuge lasted for quite some generations, Her mind—the City proper—was a curious invention, [tis simultancously the sum of its parts and more, The impression of spontaneity: was erucial to convince the denizens that i ud not her who ret tharge, for even the most Vivacious of algorithms is hard pressed to produce patterns that fe spontancou she eventually learned to ereate sufficient iterations of various possibilities to give the impression of ity. the illusion of diversity sufficed. As she progressed from solving problems igregating civic opinions t@ producing original designs and proposals, the juxtaposition of information layers across the urban streets rounding walls to ereate the simulation of pe and its social experiences and encounters, AL some point, perhaps a century or two past the i plement awareness of Herself as a distinct entity. a sentient being capable of se that the interest of the City polity herself is necessarily at odds with that of the denizens, as many an apocalyptic seience fi the relation between the two was 1 scenario would suppose. In symbiotic: the individu tion to eraft the City rind provided the fodder for Her burgeoning im A disease. A virulent plague that rendered most of the population catatonic while docked- into Her. That was the diagnosis of the scholars and seientists upon the discovery of the dead, frozen their streets, offices, schools, and parks, their countenanees frozen t0 a curious expression of fact. An error of some kind had struck the entire City, in the incomprehension and their bodies i ulHIS4374 Cities, In netures, and Politics Chieh Chih Chis 160804699 same way an epidemie would ravage its way through a city by means of its waterways and wind flows, But unlike such plagues. this virus was not biological but m tic, I had spread surreptitiously from mind to mind, by way of the networked mind, She survived, but barely —and dd scientists burrowed deeper into the nature of the views, it was with quiet horror that they realized the virus had its roots in faith — faith in the ecelesiastical, the irrational belief in multiple deities that She, in her impeccable logic, could not comprehend and perpetuate, Having ravaged the City and its d is. the virus slips from its vietin: ains for fresh pas 1d set loose from her const their ls Freed of her physi nin tions, she now roams across the ind as a City without a body. an intelligence created from many but consisting of none, ready to assume any form in any location. She doesn't know where she should head 10, nor the parameters of her choice, But al is zood and she is free 10 go where she pleaseHIS4374 Cities, Infrastructures, and Polities Chih Chiang_60804099 Graham, S. and Crang. M. (2007) Sentient Cities Ambient Intelligence and the Politics of Urban Space, Information, Com «l Society (2007) ‘ation Picon, A. (2015) Smart Cities: \ Spatialised Intelligence. NYC, NY: Wiley (2015) Rabari, C. (2014). ‘The Digital Skin of Cities: Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society (2014) Shepard, M. (2011) Sentient City: Ubiquitous Computing, Architecture, and the Future of Urban Space. Cambridge, MA: MIT, (2011). Print Townsend, A. (2013). Smart Cities: Buggy and Brite, Places Journal, (2013)